I’m flying at 35,000 feet enjoying the modern miracle of Wifi on airplanes. I just spent the last week of my life visiting restaurant companies in the Northeast corner of the US. I feel honoured to be called upon by some of the biggest restaurant companies in the world to help them with their catering and off premise business operations. I am very lucky to do the work that comes with my job as Founder & CEO at MonkeyMedia Software and The Catering Institute.

I have been thinking deeply about catering & takeout out of restaurants for the last two decades. I’ve written about it, made videos about it, presented at conferences about it and have been evangelizing to our community that our consumers will continue to demand services for our restaurant brands where they Live, Work & Play. The off premise business opportunity for restaurants will continue to grow and increase in complexity.

In my world, I see complex manufacturing dynamics in all of the restaurants I spend time in. The way I see it, when it comes to feeding our customers where they Live, Work and Play, there are only two core service channels. (Takeout and Catering).

Now, to be clear, what I am proposing is a framework for every restaurant to consider when it comes to segmenting it’s markets, so that our operations can adapt to the complexity of order entry, conversation, manufacturing and distribution. Depending on the service channel for off-premise restaurant services & products, our operations will react and behave differently based on the occasion and order dynamics. Saying that, here’s the rub…. Our customers are not experts! We are! The look to us to tell them what to order when. And so, we will only succeed with flawless execution and our customers expect us to know our business better than them. And so, as experts, we have to recommend the right things, for the right occasion, every single time.

There is a lot to discuss here, and I am going to self publish and essay on this topic where it will be available at the Catering Institute, because I think this is the single biggest challenge that our restaurant community faces when it comes to maximizing transaction volume for our off-premise sales opportunities.

Here is what I want to say…… Language matters! And it matters a lot. If our operations are unclear on how to direct our guests based on their service demand and feeding occasion, then can you imagine how confused our guests are going to be when they place their orders? I can tell you that serving multiple markets out of a single restaurant is absolutely daunting. But, it’s also absolutely possible!

So, as you open the doors to your restaurant(s) tomorrow, I want you to think about segmenting your takeout and catering opportunities based on the market and consumer demand for more products & services for your brand.

Dine In, Takeout, Delivery, Curbside, Catering, Event Catering, Food Trucks, Online Ordering, and Group Ordering are all examples of market segmentations and the use of language. There are probably 100’s more that we have not thought about yet! Now you can see the complexity here! To many things going on at once, and not enough team members inside our organizations that understand the dynamics. This lack of understanding leads to chaos inside our organizations. We have to work on this together.

To me, it’s about feeding your customers where they Live, Work & Play. It’s about getting your customers to spend more money with your brand more often. It’s about making your brand loyalists aware of these horizontal services and getting them to think of you at the right time, for the right occasion.

Takeout and Catering are closely related cousins. Both can be available for pickup or delivery. Both of these order types can be placed online, through mobile devices, through kiosks, in-store or on the telephone.

So, I ask you, how are you segmenting those services in your restaurants and what are the best practices for the order to cash cycle of each type of transaction? I can tell you, if you don’t frame the conversation properly for your customers, they are going to walk away with a negative experience.

From what I see every single day in the field, few brands, if any are doing a good job at explaining this to their internal teams or to their customers. And so, the result is confusing and less than stellar.

Until we take the time to properly segment our markets, and develop language internally and externally that makes sense, we will continue to make it hard on ourselves.

I am going to spend some time thinking more about what I can do to help our community frame this dynamic properly so that we can set ourselves up for success and grow the off-premise sales channel for restaurants.

Hi Emily! Thank you for taking the time to respond. I would certainly agree that Event Catering is more full service. However, to me, the differentiation happens at the market level. As a consumer, the need to feed for an occasion provides me with many options. However, depending on what my requirement is, will depend on the budget, quality and level of service I am willing to purchase. And so to me, and event is much more than just food. It has all of the other “event aspects” that will compliment the food. Does that make sense?

Your post is too wordy.. Either you are the restaurant business or the catering business but both do not work together. Takeout is another story. If you enjoy reading on the other hand, download A Man Short “An Insider’s Tale of T.G.I. Friday’s in the 1980s” 206 entertaining pages and the northeast vignettes will be of great interest to you. Jeff

jeff, thanks for taking the time to comment. You are probably right about the length of my blog post. It’s a longer discussion. As far as catering not working in the confines of a restaurant, I’d recommend a book to you as well…. Evidently there is a great discussion to be had… I’ll definitely grab a copy of the Insider’s Tale of TGI.http://www.amazon.ca/Get-Catering-Grow-Sales-Perspective/dp/1463598785